You should stop responding to Datastorm, he just comes into this thread once a month to find fault with a game he doesn't like anymore, and not even in consistent ways. First he's complaining about how his accomplishments in 1.0 got shat on, and now he's complaining when a group has tolerable standards for recruitment.

So basically he's just looking for anything to bitch about because everyone else is actually enjoying the game despite having plethoras of complaints themselves.

Elitists snub people who aren't good at what they do. Hardcore players are elitists who in fact may be decent human beings. I'd consider myself pretty hardcore, having 3 jobs all geared above i75 and having beaten all of the content except twintania now. I'd say a hardcore FFXIV player is a player who plays at least 4 days a week, and focuses on multiple jobs being advanced to i90.

Datastorm....really? Should just unwind that knot in your rectum and play the new game.

Had an odd experience last night where our healer in Pharos basically suggested we abandon the duty before we even start the dungeon. We convinced her to stick around and ran the dungeon just fine, only dying to Siren and then only twice.

The dungeon isn't hard at all once you know what you're doing. The first boss can get pretty chaotic, and for Siren all the roles need to be paying close attention to at least one of the mechanics, but otherwise I find Haukke Manor to be more of a challenge than Pharos.

EDIT: I kind of want the soundtrack, but my computer doesn't have a Blu-ray drive and that would kind of defeat the purpose.

People are funny when it comes to Pharos. Yes, it's hard, but it's not insane. In my last PUG group, the bard wanted to abandon duty after we beat the first boss, and this was without anyone dying at all before that point. They asked 'DPS too slow?' but they weren't too well geared and at one point during the boss I (melee) was stuck on the opposite side of his giant AoE - too far for even a gap closer. Anyway, the tank said we'll be fine, we dismissed the vote and kept going. Bard eventually DCed and we got a new one, cleared the dungeon just fine.

Funny enough, did another Pharos run with some people in my LS and we had all sorts of trouble with Siren....

I actually find Haukke easy now, but I've run it several times via roulette. I almost never get WP or AK anymore.

D, when you geared up WAR did you spend myth on relic Zenith first, or the chestpiece?

I went Bravura +1 simply for hate purposes, but either one is a good choice. Honestly, the Dual Haken is being argued as your best option for a weapon simply because of dat accuracy (just got mine yesterday), so bear that in mind if you're working on the primal ex weapon too. I argued with a few of my buddies about my build because I put less into parry and more into crit, mostly cuz I now enjoy offtanking more, but ideally you want just enough accuracy to break the cap on twintania which is like ROUGHLY 480 (argued by people, so I may be off) then work parry up.

Also, glowy axe was definitely priority for me back in the beginning...cuz, you know....glowy.

The primal EX weapon idea occurred to me as well, since the only reason I'd take the Holy Lance is for vanity. Unless the Allagan spear drops, the Gae Bolg Zenith is BiS, and it'd make more sense for me to get the axe. (And, that would work out nicely since i really like the WAR myth chestpiece.)

I get the allure of shiny things. See: Gae Bolg Zenith. ;)

Of course, that's if my primal EX progress ever picks up. Other than giving Garuda a shot after Coil earlier this week, I haven't been trying much with 'emp. Many distractions, like actually leveling war. :) I gotta get back to those since I want accessory drops from all of them.

Yeah, I went gae bolg too. My drg is now i85, attack power of 498 (schweet). Gonna make you sad face real quick, the BiS stuff for war has none of the primal accessories in slot. Really sad too, given I've skipped the allagan ring a couple times in lieu of the vortex ring (which, as of last night, I've lost to EVERY other tank, and I was MT in each scenario, 4 drops now). My war is now i88, however, which is BALLIN. My advice, if you know in advance that you'll be offtanking in something like an hm primal, garuda ex, ultima normal, or even twintania, you'd be better focusing on having the boosted crit and determination over the extra parry, so get pretty much everything as you can so as you have options. Saddest part of it all is come 2.2, everything's probably gonna be outclassed quickly.

If you have some free time to do so, you'd benefit greatly from making a few crafted accessories with materia added. You'll lose a touch of vitality, but benefit from boosted parry rate AND strength, and if you wanted more crit and determination.

Gonna start leveling paladin next week. Hopefully I can work up the coinage for curtana +1 and forego the holy shield for now since I aquired an allagan shield last week. Already have all darklight and a bunch of allagan shit so it should be easy to have ready for combat use as soon as I hit 50. Just need to find motivation to get cnj/whm to 36 I think for stoneskin.

One guy eating the charge wouldn't be difficult to heal back up, 3 people eating it plus a subsequent siren song is impossible to heal back up because I need to keep the tank alive too. It wouldn't make sense for you to get hit while you're on the edge unless she was doing her outer circle song though (she randomly does one of those two moves), or you were standing the exact opposite end of where she was charging.

No, I know the two attacks. Most of the time I panic when she doesn't show up in the middle and take a while to find where on the edge she is, but there has been at least two occasions where I have been just about 90 degrees from where she is and still gotten hit by it.

Must be some pretty insane lag on your end, I've never had that problem and I play from Asia. Really I'm mostly annoyed that the other 3 guys just stood in the exact center the whole time and didn't even try to dodge it, it's impossible to heal 3 people through that fast enough especially when people are too lazy to silence the vulnerability debuff too.